[SharePoint Developer Tip of the Day] SPPersistedObject.Properties is a great...

[Dave Graham]

The SPPersistedObject.Properties  property is a great place to store miscellaneous data and place flags on administrative objects.  There are two very important considerations when using this data store.

1. Although it is implemented by a System.Collections.Hashtable which can take any object as a key.  The only acceptable key in SharePoint is a string key.  Using any other object class will cause SharePoint to throw spurious and class cast exceptions. The Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPBackwardCompatibilityPropertyMapper.GetClusterProperties() is one such internal method that will throw System.InvalidCastException if your SPFarm.Properties contain non-string keys.

2. Remember to call Update after adding or removing a key/value pair in the Hashtable.  It is easy to miss this and I have found that it is often not detected in unit tests.  The following are SharePoint singleton objects within a given process: SPAdministrationWebApplication.Local, SPDiagnosticService.Local, SPFarm.Local, SPFarm.Local.TimerService, SPServer.Local, SPWebService.ContentService, SPWebService.AdministrationService,  SPWebServiceInstance.LocalAdministration, and SPWebServiceInstance.LocalContent.  In most unit tests both the operations performed and the asserts called occur in the same process.  If you are setting properties on these singleton objects within your unit test process, there is no way to tell whether those properties were persisted back to the database.  The only way to detect it would be to use a two process test harness.

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Posted By Dave Graham to SharePoint Developer Tip of the Day at 3/06/2009 12:04:00 PM